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This week Plex announced Plex Labs, a new internal section of the company that focuses on sharing in-depth Medium posts, community ideas, and passion projects created by Plex engineers. The first such project is called "Plexamp," a macOS and Windows app that pulls from your existing Plex music library and accumulates it all into one miniaturized interface (via The Next Web).

The Winamp-inspired app works similar to a native Mac app (so media keys and notifications are supported), plays "just about any music format," can remote control other Plex players and vice-versa, and supports offline playback. More in-depth features include Spotlight-like search for your entire Plex music library, gapless playback, soft transitions when pausing, resuming and changing tracks, and loudness leveling to normalize playback volume across different albums.

image-block-plex-labs-plexamp-macbook-10-800x545.jpg

In terms of the interface, the app's default setting appears to be around the size of a miniaturized iTunes player, and it features four different sizes in total "including one that hides the app entirely." Plexamp's minimalism extends into its buttons, which appear when needed and otherwise stay hidden. Plex co-founder Elan Feingold mentioned that the Plexamp team forced itself to think small in terms of the app's footprint, so it could act as a miniature companion to Plex's larger apps.
It all started over a beer -- as most great things do -- re-envisioning what a tiny and powerful music player might look like in 2017. The most classic and beloved small audio player, Winamp, was first released almost exactly TWENTY years ago. Written in a low-level language, it ran on Windows, and was limited to playing files on the local (or networked) filesystem.

Plex, on the other hand, provides a best-in-class client/server model, an extremely metadata rich library, is highly portable, and gives you access to your entire music collection from anywhere in the world; we wanted to pair this with a similarly excellent music player. Literally the only requirement we had was "small"; Plex has plenty of bigger apps already, but nothing that sits unobtrusively on a desktop, beguiling and delighting. We even forced ourselves to limit the design to a single simple window.
The app also turns albums into art with SoundPrints and visualizers, which change with each album played. The main focus of the app is said to be the discovery of songs within your existing music library, with library stations that track popularity, rating, and listening history to curate music.

plexamp-app-800x283.jpg

These stations include "Library Radio" that picks songs across your entire song catalog, and "Time Travel Radio" that begins with the earliest released music in your library and works its way forward. "Artist Radio" starts with a specific artist and then "explores more corners of your library" within similar genres as the original musician.

Those interested can download Plexamp for free on the Plex Labs webpage, but to use the app you'll need to sign up for a Plex account. Feingold noted that the app might have a few "rough edges" due to its creation by just a handful of Plex employees in their spare time.

Article Link: Plex Launches Miniaturized Music App for Mac and Windows Called 'Plexamp'
 
5+ years ago this would've been amazing. But with streaming services being the main way I consume music this has little use for me.

Looks gorgeous though. And no doubt for those that curate local libraries via Plex it'll be great.
 
YES! Awesome. I can cancel iTunes Match finally. Accessing all of my music from my MacBook Pro has always required iTunes Match. If I can remotely access plex music with an application like this, I'm sold. Time to download.
 
Ahh Plex...read their forums and half the user base is complaining about the incredible amount of bugs that are going unfixed, players and features left languishing, features that get released and then promptly abandoned and here they are with so much free time to create more USELESS crap that nobody asked for!!

They spent millions of dollars acquiring a news media content provider for one of the least exciting features in Plex. Now the engineers have so much spare time they’re delving into their own projects to pass the time????
 
I use Plex daily and it's brilliant. Netflix and Amazon Prime could learn a lot from the Plex interface, usability and sheer range of customisable features, but I'm not holding my breath!
 
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Hmmm... I have to look into this.. Of course, my usage is dependent on how Plex manages iTunes metadata. I am not throwing 15 years of music ratings out the drain now.
 
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Hmmm... I have to look into this.. Of course, my usage is dependent on how Plex manages iTunes metadata. I am not throwing 15 years of music ratings out the drain now.

Been a while since I used Plex, but looks like it does:

Enabling this option will attempt to import your music playlists from iTunes. It will also import your ratings, the date you added the music, as well as play and skip counts for tracks in your library.

This option requires that iTunes be installed in the default location on the computer running Plex Media Server.

https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/200288926-Creating-Libraries
 
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I like this, I usually have the web interface up and going when playing my music on my main computer. This is pretty slick as it allows me now to have a much smaller foot print on my screen.
 
I was initially excited about Plex, but I've not had great luck with it. One day when the Internet was down, we tried to watch a movie, and it wouldn't work because it couldn't 'phone home' or something. :( And, is there some way to get rid of that default display and just have a good 'browser' or search instead?

While it doesn't have a client for as many platforms, I might just head back towards Air Video.
 
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